Dr. Howard Shrobe, a principal research scientist at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has an office that
looks normal but doesn't act like it. His lights and drapes are
on voice control, he uses a white board that digitizes what's
written on it, and his building is equipped with wireless location
devices that can tell him where he is at any given time. It's
all part of MIT's Project Oxygen (http://oxygen.lcs.mit.edu), a program working on
pervasive computing.

Don't expect the office of the future to look like an
episode of The Jetsons. "Our philosophy is to make it as
natural as you can with as few gimmicks," says Shrobe. The
main goal of tomorrow's office is to help workers capture and
organize information more easily and efficiently.

Charlie Forslund and Joel Stanfield, research engineers with
work space environment company Steelcase, collaborated with IBM on
BlueSpace (www.research.ibm.com/bluespace), a prototype office of
the future project. Forslund describes it as a "concept
car." Two particularly innovative features, he says, are an
"EverywhereDisplay" that projects images onto any surface
in the office and a monitor rail that allows LCD screens to be
moved around to allow for easy meetings and collaboration with
co-workers.

A hallmark of both Project Oxygen and BlueSpace is the
worker's ability to easily control the environment, from
lighting to temperature. In BlueSpace, for example, a display
called InfoPanel puts those items at users' fingertips and also
allows them to communicate their location, calendar, projects and
privacy needs to co-workers.

If you're curious as to when these technologies will make it
into your business, look forward to a slow infiltration. Stanfield
sees advances like full-spectrum LED task lighting, which creates a
more natural lighting environment, showing up in regular offices
within the next few years. Ultimately, the focus is not on gadgets,
but on production, privacy and personalization for office workers.
Beyond that, you'll just have to wait for the future to find
out what your office will look and act like.

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